01162nas a2200097 4500008004100000245003400041210003400075520088300109100003200992856004001024 1995 eng d00aLocal Theories of Inheritance0 aLocal Theories of Inheritance3 aInheritance network are not expressive enough to capture all intuitions behind inheritance. Hence, a number of significantly different semantics have been proposed. Here, a family of local theories of inheritance is presented that are conceptually simple and computationally tractable. A general model-theoretic framework for specifying direct semantics to networks and clarifying relationships amount them is developed. It is also shown that the local constraints specifying the semantics are satisfiable when the attention is restricted to acyclic networks. The notion of local semantics is generalized to what is called 'ground' local semantics to further understand the relationship between the local theories and the path-based theories of inheritance. A polynomial-time set-based inheritance algorithms that conform to these inheritance theories is also presented.1 aThirunarayan, Krishnaprasad uhttp://knoesis.wright.edu/node/1563